Lesson: Externalize the internal

Hitchcock himself felt this comedy contained "too much dialogue," but to me the humor is visual to its core. Especially given how cleverly the characters' inner emotions are externalized.

How Hitchcock visualizes...

1. Loneliness

   Our protagonist is a widowed farmer overcome with loneliness after the loss of his wife.

   Hitchcock establishes an empty chair as a symbolic representation of her absence:

2. A sense of possibility

   Soon thereafter, his servant helps him make a list of prospective wives:

   The ghostly images of potential suitors in that same chair perfectly externalize the farmer's inner thoughts. It wouldn't have been nearly as effective without the above setup.

3. Nervousness

   When our farmer finally proposes to the nervous Thirza Tapper, the Jell-O mold she's holding telegraphs her emotional response.

   A small but effective way of making visual what would otherwise rely on the subtleties of performance. It actually reminds me a bit of the famous water-shaking moment in Jurassic Park.

Exceptions to the rule

Is some of the humor tied up in dialogue? Sure. But, when it happens...

...I mean, come on, it's pretty great.

Lesson: Repetition makes meaning.

Part of what makes Hitchcock such a great filmmaker is how simple his messaging is. He doesn't try to say anything overly complicated with his shots, because communicating the simple stuff is hard enough.

Champagne, rough though it may be, provides some brilliant examples of how repetition creates meaning.

Repetition 1: "B46"

After our protagonist boards a cruise ship, an employee shows her a map of the vessel. We then fade from the map to its corresponding door:

With three wordless shots, Hitchcock communicates a simple fact: "She's now staying aboard the ship."

The repetition of "B46" does the heavy lifting here, because its inclusion in the latter two shots points to an even simpler unit of meaning: "The room she's about to enter is aboard the ship."

This seemingly trivial clarification is in fact crucial to the story, as her arrival on the ship was less than traditional (she was rescued from a sinking plane in the middle of the Atlantic). Cutting straight to her in the room might have left us confused as to whether we're on land or at sea.

Repetition 2: The Satchel

When her father's fortune runs dry, our protagonist hatches a plan to sell her jewelry to make ends meet.

Again, a key object persists between shots: the satchel. And again, Hitchcock is making a very simple statement with this repetition: "She's lost the last of her riches."

If we zoom in momentarily on the fade between the purse (open, and then closed), we can find an even simpler unit of meaning: "There's a bunch of valuable jewelry in that purse."

This simple statement sets up the stakes for the robbery such that, even though we don't see what the thief took, we know exactly what's missing.

Repetition 3: The Note

One transition in particular reveals just how far you can stretch the concept of repetition as a maker of meaning.

We cut from a note, given to her by a well-meaning acquaintance, to that same man's front door (which we've never seen before).

The repeated object is nothing more than a shape – a white rectangle, to be exact – but it tells us everything we need to know: "She is now at the door of the man who wrote that note." (And, presumably, she is in need of a friend.)

The Rule

A clear pattern emerges from these examples:

• "B46": The numbers stay the same – but the thing they're labeling changes.
• The Satchel: It's open in the first shot – but closed in the next.
• The Note: It's a white rectangle in the first shot – but transforms into a front-door placard.

In each transition, some visual element persists across the cut. And that repetition, coupled with a meaningful change, is what conveys the message – whether that's establishing a setting (boat), raising the stakes (jewelry), or revealing a character's motive (a note).

There's an obvious but often overlooked truth behind Hitchcock's famed visual efficiency: To be efficient, you first need to know what you're trying to say.

More often than not, this aligns perfectly with what the audience needs to know at any given moment. Hitchcock never assumes we understand what's going on. He knows it's his job to tell us.

Note: For more on this concept, check out Bruce Block's theory of contrast and affinity.

Lesson: Create visual separation to show conflict.

The Manxman is a tale of two best friends who fall in love with the same woman.

How does Hitchcock show unaired conflict between two supposed allies? He creates visual separation between the men, using every tool available to him.

1. Camera Movement

   This is the first time the love triangle is introduced to us, so Hitchcock makes sure we take note.

   Instead of showing Christian and Pete in a two-shot, we suddenly see them from Kate's point of view – which pans from one to the other. They now occupy separate frames.

2. Staging

   In an effective use of deep staging, Christian spies Kate and Pete chatting across the bar.

   The distance between them (emphasized by extras and depth of field) helps us feel "left out".

3. Blocking

   Christian inserts himself between Pete and Kate in the frame, going so far as to put a hand on his friend and physically separate the couple.

   It's subtle, and justified by the logic of the scene, but it works subconsciously – both for the audience, and for the character.

4. Physicality

   Being present while your friend hits on your crush through her open bedroom window is bad enough, but...

   ...The humiliation is compounded even further by Pete's use of Christian as a stepladder.

5. Props

   The two play checkers while awaiting the doctor's word on Kate's newborn baby.

   Even a half-hearted board game can showcase that the two are on opposite sides of an issue – even if one of them is yet unaware.

Together again…

Pete, having been abandoned by Kate, now seeks the advice of his best friend.

For Christian, the gravity of his own betrayal has finally hit home, and he grips his grief-stricken friend. They are aligned once again.

Lesson: Courage!

It is a prerequisite for filmmaking. So often in film...

• there's money at stake
• the thing you make will be seen, and judged, by others
• it might not turn out the way you'd hoped

Whether you're writing your first feature script or directing your first short film, it's going to feel like a series of risks.

Take Blackmail. It must have been nerve-wracking knowing that the main actress, Anny Ondra, "hardly spoke any English," and that in this pre-dubbing era they'd need to have another actress "standing outside the frame, with her own microphone, while miss Ondra pantomimed the words."

There was so much potential for things to go wrong, especially given this was Hitchcock's very first sound film.

So I'm inclined to learn from Hitchcock's attitude making Blackmail rather than his craft alone. After all, I'm sure plenty of film scholars have discussed, at great length, how he elevates this portrait of a troubled woman – who kills a man in self-defense – into the subjective experience of paranoia itself.

How he sets up the man's lifeless hand as both a literal and symbolic representation of the murder…

…How the image of the hand is then repeated to show what our heroine is thinking…

…How paranoia twists what she sees…

…How the knife follows her around even in casual conversation…

Yes, I'm sure all of that has been discussed to death.

What I'd rather discuss is Hitchcock's daring. In his own words:

The producers decided it would be silent except for the last reel…. But since I suspected the producers might change their minds and eventually want an all-sound picture, I worked it out that way. We utilized the techniques of talkies, but without sound. Then, when the picture was completed, I raised objections to the part-sound version, and they gave me carte blanche to shoot some of the scenes over.

We used the Shuftan process because there wasn't enough light in the museum to shoot there. You set a mirror at an angle of forty-five degrees and you reflect a full picture of the British Museum in it…. The producers knew nothing about the Shuftan process and they might have raised objections, so I did all of this without their knowledge.

Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock/Truffaut

These are the words of someone who not only understands the art of filmmaking, but also the art of taking chances.

It's important to note that Hitchcock never expected to win every battle:

The ending I originally wanted was different.... But the producers claimed it was too depressing.

Some things you just don't have control over. What a relief! In all other matters, you have to weather the discomfort of making a confident, risky, potentially unpopular choice.

How do you get that kind of courage? It doesn't come from asking nicely; nor does it necessitate haphazard bravado (Hitchcock planned his work meticulously).

I think courage comes from making a well-informed decision, then executing with absolute conviction.

Lesson: There's a simple recipe for suspense.

Every filmmaker wants the audience on the edge of their seats. Someone wanting to know what happens next is a fundamental necessity of storytelling, regardless of genre.

The better you've done your job, the more desperate the audience will be to see the rest of the story play out.

On that front, I'm beginning to get an idea of how Hitchcock creates suspense.

1. He raises a question.
2. He promises an answer.
3. He makes us wait for that answer.
4. He ups our curiosity while we wait. (optional, but effective)

Some examples from Murder!...

The Scream

1. He raises a question. By opening the movie with a woman's scream, he makes us wonder: what caused the scream?

2. He promises an answer. We're presumably moving towards the source of the scream, so we know we'll eventually arrive at it. (Imagine if the people opening their windows were looking out them in the opposite direction of our movement. This wouldn't create as much suspense, because we wouldn't know feel like we were moving towards the scream's source).

3. He makes us wait for that answer. The camera's slow track across the windows forces us to sit in the mystery.

4. He ups our curiosity. The banging on the door. The neighbors' reactions. The barking. It all serves to increase the intensity, and our curiosity.

Getting Dressed

1. He raises a question. Awoken by the racket, these two characters are desperate to find out what all the commotion is about.

2. He promises an answer. The couple is in the process of getting out the door so they (and we) can find out.

3. He makes us wait for that answer. Before they can get out the door, they first have to get dressed. She has trouble getting her foot through the leg hole, making us wait even longer.

4. He ups our curiosity. Voices outside the window increase in intensity as they dress, culminating in a second scream.

The Crime Scene

1. He raises a question. What is everyone looking at?

2. He promises an answer. The camera roves about the space, promising to reveal what was concealed in the wide shot.

3. He makes us wait for that answer. The panning and tilting are deliberately slow.

4. He ups our curiosity. The crowd's stunned silence tell us they're looking at something horrible. Even the policeman is frozen in shock.

The Box Office

1. He raises a question. What does the note say? Apparently even a mundane question will create suspense if we're made to wait for the answer.

2. He promises an answer. The note is center frame, and we're tracking right towards it, so we know we'll eventually be able to read it.

3. He makes us wait for that answer. The push-in is painfully slow.

4. He ups our curiosity. People stroll across frame, obstructing our view as we get closer.

So, what is suspense?

Suspense is an integral part of life lived in three dimensions. It is the anxious uncertainty of what comes next.

First we discover that there's an important unknown. Eventually, we come to know it. Suspense is what we feel during the in-between.

Puns are a great springboard for creating visual meaning. Hitchcock often takes an idiom that describes what's happening in the story, and then makes that idiom literal on screen.

We see a small example of this in The Skin Game. An impoverished couple, fearing they'll lose their home, make a desperate plea to local baron Hillcrist.

One idiom for what's happening here is that these locals are coming to Hillcrist, "hat in hand." As though to hammer this dynamic home, Hitchcock literally puts the man's hat in his hands.

Hitchcock's work is full of visual puns like this.

He even admits, in Hitchcock/Truffaut, to a flubbed example in The Lodger (1927). It occurs near the beginning of the film, in a moment where Hitchcock is trying to articulate that everyone in town is keeping their eyes out for a serial murderer.

I showed the back of a small London news van. The back windows are oval. There were two men sitting in the front, the driver and his mate. You see them through the windows – just the tops of their heads. And as the van sways from side to side, you have the impression of a face with two eyes and the eyeballs moving. Unfortunately, it didn't work out.

Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock/Truffaut

Not all visual puns will succeed. But the ones that do can contribute to a sort of subconscious visual layering that helps drive home the purpose of the shot.

If we know what we're trying to say with a shot, we can point to that message with multiple layers of visual meaning. The more that everything in a shot points to one singular message, the better chance we have of articulating the information the audience needs to know.

Each beat of the film should convey a single, vital piece of information. To that end, visual puns are just one more tool at your disposal.

Although it shares with every other tool a crucial prerequisite: Before we can effectively communicate something to the audience, we must first know what it is we're trying to say.

This severely underrated comedy contains tons of hilarious and inventive visual gags.

An untraveled young couple receives a surprise inheritance, and decides to see the world. After an extravagant night in Paris, our two drunken tourists stumble back into their hotel lobby and make their way to the elevator.

This gag occurs at the end of a long night out. It is the final of many reminders that they're unfamiliar with, and unequipped for, world travel.

Without a bit of dialogue, it effectively establishes what will become the story's primary dilemma: they're in over their heads.

Power imbalance is a great accelerant for conflict.

Strauss is a young composer who lives in his father's shadow. His girlfriend, Resi, wants the elder Strauss to give his son's music a chance. Resi stands in the doorway, waiting for the elder Strauss to finish conducting.

Visually, the power imbalance is clear. Hitchcock's use of contrast to elaborate the difference in status between Resi and the elder Strauss brings the tension of this moment to life.

• Height - The elder Strauss stands on a podium. She stands on the ground.
• Blocking - She hovers in the background by the door, unsure of herself. He stands in the center of the room, his purpose unwavering.
• Size - Compared to the elder Strauss, she appears small in the frame.
• Spaciousness - The long vertical lines on the wall between them paint her into a much narrower frame than the composer.
• Motion - Strauss makes big, exaggerated motions, while she remains still.
• Angle - She faces Strauss, while he is turned away from her, unaware of her presence.
• Clothing - Against the elder Strauss' conducting outfit, her outfit appears flowery and unserious.
• Color - Everyone else wears something dark. She wears white.

Every choice here stems from the emotional truth of the scene's protagonist, Resi, at this exact moment. Her nerves are magnified by the frame.

A few quick observations on this psychological thriller.

I'm reminded not to be afraid to reframe a shot, mid-take. It won't bug the audience, as long as it's motivated by a character's movement – even if it's only a side character, as in this case.

Continuing on in the same scene, this cut felt strange:

Usually when we cut closer to someone in dialogue, we also move closer to their line of subjectivity – nearer to looking them straight in the eye. But in this case, the cut actually moves us further from the character's eye line.

Was this intentional? I don't know. Charitably, this cut was meant to highlight that fact that we want to know more about this dark-haired woman, but that she keeps us at an arm's length. Uncharitably, this was a mistake (in the film days, there was no playback, so maybe they just didn't nail the second angle). Either way, it certainly had an effect on me.

Speaking of odd angles…

These two angles remind me of the variation that's possible in a simple shot-reverse-shot. Though they're facing each other, Hitchcock had our two main characters turn their bodies away, emphasizing the gulf between them.